François Matarasso

At the end of last year, I closed two websites I’d maintained for many years and began to archive my work here. The reasons for doing so seemed good at the time, even necessary, but some things disappeared, while this site lost its clear focus on participatory art. To be honest, that was probably always going to happen because my thinking about co-creation has been going through a deep and sometimes chaotic transformation. 

Thankfully, some light is reappearing between the clouds, and the work I’ve been doing on A Selfless Art is encouraging. Still, it marks a break with the past and it may be years before I know whether its worthwhile, and so I’ve decided to move that work to a new website so that both the past and the present have space to breathe. 

This site will return to its original focus on the theory, history and practice of participatory art. I will re-publish here some of my writing on the subject that is no longer accessible elsewhere, alongside relevant posts about a new project I will start in the autumn. 

All my other writing, including A Selfless Art, will be hosted on a new website. It’s time to start a new notebook with a blank page, and I’m curious to see what character will emerge over the coming months. I sense that it will be more personal—at least that’s what A Selfless Art is asking of me. Like all my work, it will remain free and open. It has an old name, but a new address: www.regularmarvels.fr